The Seattle Seahawks had just pulled off a huge comeback in the NFC championship game last Sunday to beat the Green Bay Packers and secure a second consecutive trip to the Super Bowl. Fans at CenturyLink Field roared their approval. A gleeful city was delirious.

The way Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman sees it, there's no way for visiting teams to simulate the sensory overload of a playoff game at CenturyLink Field, and certainly not the next-to-the-freight-train noise that's almost constant when the opposition is on offense.

Typical pro athlete. When quarterback Ryan Lindley signed a practice-squad deal with the San Diego Chargers a few months ago, he had his wife stay home in Arizona, and he took off to the West Coast to live with another woman.

As the NFL season heads into its fourth quarter, the Arizona Cardinals and Cleveland Browns are trying to salvage their fairy-tale seasons, while the San Diego Chargers have climbed off the scrap heap and back into the playoff race.

On a Sunday when Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady squared off for the first time in their illustrious NFL careers, and Johnny Manziel scored for the first time in his less-than-illustrious rookie season, it was another first that kept the San Diego Chargers in the playoff hunt.

With Oakland winning and Arizona losing — two of the oddities from Week 12 — about the only sure bet in the NFL these days is that the New England Patriots are going to come through. And come through big.

Tom Brady was kaput as New England's quarterback. He was so used up at age 37 — especially after a 27-point loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 4 — that talk radio in Boston and beyond crackled with suggestions the Patriots should trade him.

Steve Bisciotti, owner of the Baltimore Ravens, knew in February that the team's star player had struck his fiancee in a casino elevator, and that Atlantic City police had a copy of the surveillance footage.

Unfazed by the challenge of knocking off the defending Super Bowl champions, the San Diego Chargers leaned on a nostalgic combination to beat the Seattle Seahawks, 30-21, before a raucous, sun-splashed crowd at Qualcomm Stadium.

INDIANAPOLIS — Michael Sam stepped onto stage and looked into what might have been the largest media gathering in the history of the NFL scouting combine. Hundreds of reporters clustered in, and there were three rows of TV and video cameras.

SEATTLE — The Seattle Seahawks are headed to the second Super Bowl in their history. They have an inexhaustibly dynamic coach in Pete Carroll, an instant-superstar quarterback in Russell Wilson, the NFL's richest and most reclusive owner in Paul Allen, and a fan base so passionate that twice this season it set Guinness Book records for the loudest crowd at a sporting event.

The Philadelphia Eagles will play host to the New Orleans Saints on Saturday night in the first round of the NFL playoffs. The game will feature a quarterback duel between No. 9 from Westlake High in Austin, Texas, and …

On another bizarre NFL Sunday, when Seattle lost at home for the first time in two years, Carolina secured its first playoff berth in five years, and a bunch of left-for-dead teams somehow maintained a postseason pulse, something very typical happened:

The Kansas City Chiefs (9-0) are the NFL's only undefeated team, and quarterback Alex Smith is playing it close to the protective vest. He's ranked 27th in passing yards, yet has a league-low four interceptions.